Is it just me or is the only choice advanced mud's are given for
hosting is just to host your own server? I mean WTF mate.

Server went down last year, and Ive had no end of problems with
computers since that time. Damn universal inconsistencies.

Web space is easy to find, but trying to find a mud hosting service
which actualy doesnt limit your mud without emptying your pocket
book or credit card is about a dilemma.

Average mud hosts seem to be like 64 megs of ram, 10% cpu (wtf),
maybe 200 megs of space -- all this for maybe 20$ a month.

This might be fine if your starting up a stock diku, merc or rom.

How about a solution for those of us who left stock behind a long time ago?

Myself, the only ones I seem to find are 100$ a month (or more!) and
its just stock crazy cause damn, we're mudders, we're supposed to be
cheap and lazy -- hence why we like text and not gfx.

myself, just to be able to boot up, needs at least 300 megs of ram (very
hard to find a service which even offers more then 128 megs).

I realize that bandwidth costs money, but in this day and age, a server
offering a bit of ram, a non pent2 cpu (yeah I actualy stumbled upon a host
site which said they had one p2 server left to rent), with a bit of hard drive
space -- um hello, log file of 400 megs anyone?

Eon-mud? Gods brother of gods sister to god's cousin who mentioned
god's mother to a brother of a second god's husband's mud?

I mean what the hell

Basicaly needing 768 megs of ram (hey I need a test port to code on too).
at least 3-4 gigs of space (backups and log files and stuff). A cpu which
isnt crippled by some stupid percentage ratio! To afford this off a mud
hosting site im looking at what, 150-200$ a month? No friggin thanks,
I will pass and save my self the vasoline.

To afford this off a mud
hosting site im looking at what, 150-200$ a month?

Yes, servers cost money. The problem is that your memory requirements are insane. Consider investing the effort to switch to a disk based system (and, probably, fix a bunch of memory leaks). Yes, I know you have X00000 lines of spaghetti code that you can't fix... Should have done it sooner.

Aside from that, your options are basically to lease a dedicated server or buy one and colocate it. Either way you're looking at $100+/mo + startup costs. You could also see if your local provider offers a high speed business SDSL package, but that will cost about the same.

Well, I know its my fault. Valgrind was only recently ported over to Bsd,
and I never got a chance to abuse it to find where the memory drips were.
I always dreamed about being able to fix the issues with valgrind...but...

It compiles at 8.1 megs currently (only 7.7 when it went down). Hell magic.c
is at 850k. The problem with the architechure is me. The fact that theres
over 1k affects and near 1k abilities for 20 classes (spello is 50+ integers
for each spell). By the time the rooms load, its up to 35 megs (which I
find odd, since theres only 20 megs of zone files.) renumumber all of
the raff's and mobs, load the mobs its over 200 megs. Assign all the obj
pointers (w.obj is near a meg). 500+ command pointers for some more
memory. Add in virtual mob stat growth over time, and yes ive seen it
use 300 megs of ram when it stayed up over a week.).

Yeah I know the architechure is trashed, but its Diku, what could I expect.

Yeah I also know its spaghetti code. It ran, that was all that mattered.

I have to concur - your requirements are insane! And you can't really blame it on the Diku architecture, as that can run fine on extremely old hardware.

I designed my mud from the perspective of "premature optimsation is evil", and ended up having to make some hasty optimsations later because of the hosting limitations. In addition, most of my design decisions were made to improve stability, readability and maintainability at the expense of efficiency.

But even at its most inefficient, my mud didn't come close to the sort of requirements you're talking about (in fact I was still within what you refer to as an "average" mud host).

It compiles at 8.1 megs currently (only 7.7 when it went down). Hell magic.c
is at 850k. The problem with the architechure is me. The fact that theres
over 1k affects and near 1k abilities for 20 classes (spello is 50+ integers
for each spell). By the time the rooms load, its up to 35 megs (which I
find odd, since theres only 20 megs of zone files.) renumumber all of
the raff's and mobs, load the mobs its over 200 megs. Assign all the obj
pointers (w.obj is near a meg). 500+ command pointers for some more
memory. Add in virtual mob stat growth over time, and yes ive seen it
use 300 megs of ram when it stayed up over a week.).

Sounds like you need some kind of memory management system to unload things when players aren't actually interacting with them. Depends on how many players you have I guess but there is no reason to keep 20 megs of zone files and 200 megs of monster files loaded at all times when players may not even be in those zones.

I use DGD which is automatically disk based, but I still advocate not loading things until they're actually needed and then getting rid of them if nobody is using them.

You don' t need all of that stuff in memory as soon as you boot up for sure.

Lets see... Kingston KVR266X72RC25/2G (2 GB) chips are running at about $350/each (Memory must be populated in pairs).

If you donate the additional ECC registered ram I need for my hosting server (see above for estimate), I will be happy to host your game. Bandwidth, CPU needs and disk space isn't a problem.

The other option would be to build say an AMD Opteron Dual-Core server (Tyan has a nice barebones package available -- PX-22) then have it co-located. If you do think of building a server, I would recommend the use of ECC registered ram (to prevent nasty memory faults) and the use of SCSI-LVD drives, especially needed for long-term wear and tear.

Dedicated hosting is probably the best solution for you. Dreamhost has some nice plans: You can get the low end Dreamhost one with 512mb of ram and a P4 for $99/month all the way up to a Dual Xeon with 2GB of ram for $399/month. It's expensive, but otherwise your only alternative would be to host it yourself.

If your looking for a true router that can handle the bandwidth easily, I recommend business-class Linksys RV router or a SonicWall TZ router. Either one should do what you are needing for it to handle high-level bandwidth needs.

I use the Linksys RV routers for several of the SBS 2003 deployments I have been doing and w/ a backup ability for twin DSL or Cable modem capability, not one of them has failed.

For my dedicated mud server, I got a 1.5Mb DSL w/static IP for 29.99/mo. I loaded Slackware 10.2 on an (old) 2.0 GHz desktop with 512MB of ram and a 40gig hdd which I had sitting around. I paid ~$100 for a litle firewall appliance and some cabling. Big whoop. Now my developer partner and I have ooodles of resources... basically for $30/month.

I also like getting to configure the firewall myself, and the ease of doing data backups at the machine. I don't like that suddenly I have to be much more competent with linux.

As for hosting, I've had accounts at Wolfpaw and Betterbox and 'like' them both. Though Joong left Betterbox so I don't know if I'd go get a new account there. Chuck does 'rock' but still...

On the other hand Dale at Wolfpaw was very helpful. Even when we had trouble with what seemed like a simple thing, he helped us out. So you have to factor that you are paying something for the service.

Does your DSL contract actually allow you to run a 24/7 service though?

I re-read my agreement. It specifies a 'commercial' purpose and my static IP but does not say anything about running a 'service' specifically. My non-authoritative legal interpretation, therefore, is that I can.

Consider that I am in a modern 50+ story building. Bandwidth here is uber-cheap. For my firm I negotiated a 4Mb data pipe for $400/mo. Other providers would charge about that, or more, just for a paltry T1. (That might be an E1 to you mate)

I just can't wait til VDSL comes around (if ever). Rumors of like 100MB/sec down and nearly 45MB/sec up pipe. In the area I live in, we found that Bellsouth might actually use our little town as a testing ground.